Court Throws Out Airport Bomb Tweet Conviction

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Charges have been dropped against a Northern Ireland man who, in jest, sent a tweet threatening to blow up an airport two years ago.

Paul Chambers was found guilty in May 2010 of sending a "menacing electronic communication," after tweeting that he would blow up the U.K. Robin Hood Airport when it closed due to heavy snowfall.

The U.K.'s High Court this week, however, overturned the conviction, BBC News reported.

According to BBC News, Chambers said he sent the tweet, which contained swear words, out of frustration when he found out the airport was closed by a snowstorm in January 2010. The message reached Chambers's 600 Twitter followers.

Chambers didn't expect anyone to take what he called a "silly joke" seriously.

In 2010, the U.K. justices said in their final judgment that if someone who reads the message "would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character."

Chambers was convicted and fined £385 ($606) and ordered to pay £600 ($944) in costs.

During his November 2010 appeal, a crown judge upheld the lower court's ruling, BBC News said, claiming the tweet was "clearly menacing" and airport staff was right to be concerned and report the message.

Chambers caught a break last month, when lawyer John Cooper convinced judges of the tweet's obvious joking nature, sent by someone who had no qualms about identifying himself, therefore not sent in the context of a terrorist threat.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided to hold its appeal.

"Following our decision to charge Mr. Chambers, both the magistrates' court and the crown court, in upholding his conviction, agree that this message had the potential to cause real concern to members of the public, such as those traveling through the airport during the relevant time," the CPS said in a statement to BBC News.

Chambers, who lost two jobs over the scandal, told BBC News that he will likely go back to tweeting "mostly banal stuff that I was doing before."

Back in January, Leigh Van Bryan, a 26-year-old Irish citizen, had one of his Twitter posts flagged by the Department of Homeland Security before he even arrived in the U.S. for a vacation in Los Angeles. The offending tweet, which Van Bryan referred to as a simple joke, was in response to a friend asking about his upcoming plans. Van Bryan replied via Twitter: "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America."

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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